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I still have a few 2013 releases to catch up with, and I though I wanted to make my Oscar nominations predictions post having seen all of them, the nods are due early tomorrow morning so I’ll have to post them now.

No disrespect to Timur Bekmambetov and the utterly mediocre Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, but we all know that the real 2012 film about honest Abe was the one directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Daniel Day-Lewis as the beloved President and featuring no vampires. This was a movie that Mr. Spielberg had been wanting to make for over a decade (at first he had Liam Neeson pegged for the role) and that he took his time assembling the team to make it happen, getting Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kusher (who had co-written Munich for him) to adapt Pulitzer Prize winner Doris Kearns Goodwin‘s massive book about Lincoln and then assembling a truly stunning ensemble to bring the story of the final four months of such an iconic life to the screen.

I love Spider-Man. That’s first and foremost. I’m a big comic book fan and, bar none, my favorite comic book character is Spider-Man. There is just something about Peter Parker as a character, his emotions, his backstory, his way of life, that you can so easily connect to. He’s not a guy from another planet, he’s not the wealthy playboy with good looks, he didn’t find and alien ring; he’s a skinny white boy like so many of us, the nerd with the big glasses, a total outcast.

The Avengers has already been released and so far it’s my only A+ of 2012, and The Dark Knight Rises has the biggest hype of any movie of the year and will likely be a truly epic conclusion to that trilogy. But there’s another superhero movie coming out this year: Marc Webb‘s The Amazing Spider-Man, and that one has a new trailer out which you can check out after the cut.

Les Misérables is a bit too over-the-top and pompous, but it’s still seriously well-made, with a passion and energy that translates to the performances (with one critical omission) even if it doesn’t always do the same with the vocals. Read my review for it here.

Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow’s follow-up to The Hurt Locker is an undeniable masterpiece, a film that’s both disturbing and 100% necessary, the most vital film about post-9/11 America. Read my review for it here.